Dive Brief:

• Since Periscope, Twitter’s live streaming app, launched in March, educators have found ways to use the social media tool for instructional purposes.
• For example, teachers can use it take videos of important historical sites in order to conduct virtual field trips for students.
• It can also work as a professional development tool, with teachers using it, for example, to watch talks or conferences they can't attend.

Dive Insight:

As with any new tech tool, Periscope, which only stores videos for 24 hours, comes with limitations and concerns. Chief among them, as usual, is student privacy. All of the videos can be used by Twitter or shared for marketing purposes. But teachers or students can exercise some control by limiting who can see the videos and their social media distribution.

And it's probably not the right tool for every occasion — especially not momentous ones like graduation, since the videos only remain viewable for 24 hours. Still, it can offer a quick way to give and receive feedback for teachers or students. 

"By broadcasting something that's happening in a classroom to a wider audience, you're able to get some sort of interactive feedback happening in real time — which is not something that's currently available (elsewhere)," Andrew Campbell, a fifth grade teacher in Ontario, told eSchool News.